After a fortnight of such training, with no sign of the French squadron in the offing, Blanding broke them up into pairs to scout a line from Nor'west to Sou'east, Lewrie and Reliant paired with one of the Fifth Rate 32s, with ten or twelve miles between them, depending on the weather and the limit of visibility, and no more than ten or twelve sea-miles between the two pairs, resulting in a scouting line fourty or fifty miles in length cross the hundred miles 'twixt Ushant and the Scillys, through which the French must pass-if they were indeed coming.
Except for Sundays. Then Blanding would order all ships into two short columns abreast and send his Chaplain to each ship in turn for Divine Services. Chaplain Brundish was a much younger fellow than Lewrie had expected, almost as stout as his patron, but agile and energetic. He was well read and a charming, erudite supper-table guest, as full of bonhomie as Blanding and, like many gentlemanly members of the Church of England, spoke glowingly of steeplechasing and the fox hunt, of how he missed his hounds and his favourite hunters. He had a wealth of decent amusing tales and japes, played the flute, recorder, and the violin, and was possessed of a loud, deep baritone voice. His homilies were marvels, too. Oh, he'd rail against the common sailors' sins of giving in to boredom and ennui, of petty theft and drunk on duty, nodding off on watch, but they were mostly short, pithy, and very nautical, full of animus against their foes, "mateyness" between their own, of upholding God, King, and Country as a moral, religious calling, as a Good Work that would lead them all to Salvation and the Eternal Glory… all of it bracketed by well-known, beloved hymns of the up-lifting, muscular sort that left even the leery men with grins on their faces, and humming the tunes as Chaplain Brundish departed in Captain Blanding's cutter to minister to the next ship and crew.
He, surprisingly for a man of the cloth, knew his way with the cutlass and small-sword, and had a keen eye with a musket.
After the third Sunday at sea, though, Modeste put up a signal for Reliant to come close alongside. With both ships loafing along under reduced sail, both rolling, heaving, and snuffling foam, about fifty yards apart, Blanding took up a speaking-trumpet and bellowed, "This is looking to be a rum go, Lewrie! The only Frogs we've seen are prizes took by other people!"
Wars could be declared, but merchantmen on-passage had no way of learning of it; warships returning from overseas or cruising on an innocent patrol beyond the reach of coastal semaphore towers could not be informed either, and the first they would know of it would be the pugnacious approach of an enemy warship or privateer with gun-ports open and artillery run out. Such surprises would happen to ships of both sides. Frustratingly, whilst their squadron had scouted round the approaches to the English Channel, other, luckier, British warships had sailed past them with French prizes in tow, or the odd enemy merchantman sent in under a prize-crew, with the Union Flag flying above the French Tricolour to mark the new possessor.
At several of their suppers aboard Modeste, Blanding had wrung his hands, or gnawed his napkins to nubbins, to be bound by specific orders which denied them the chance to hare off in search of prizes, too, and was forced to watch other captains send in fresh fortunes to be made in the Admiralty Prize-Courts.
"If they didn't sail before the war was declared, they may not have come out at all, sir!" Lewrie had shouted back to him. "This could be a wild goose chase!"
"And, did they put to sea a day or two before, then they are weeks ahead of us by now!" Blanding had roared back, despair in his voice. "It just ain't on, dash my eyes! We will go the West Indies and the mouth of the Mississippi, Lewrie! Our orders demand we do no less… whether they are really there or not! 'Bring to battle, or pursue,' we're ordered. Then pursuit it will be! Order of sailing… Pylades, your Reliant, then me, with Cockerel the hind-most! Two miles' separation 'tween ships, and shape course West-Sou'west, half West, cross the Bay of Biscay!"
"Aye aye, sir!" Lewrie had bawled back, wondering if his whisky, mustard, and store of jerked meat and sausages for the cats would last that long. More disturbingly, would he have to sift, rinse, and dry their litter for re-use, should the level of sand in the barrel run low?
"The Indies, sir?" Lt. Westcott asked after coming up to the windward side of the quarterdeck, with a brief tap of two fingers upon the brim of his hat for a salute.
"It appears so, Mister Westcott," Lewrie said with a sigh. "The hands… damned few of 'em have had a chance to go there. Damned few have ever been exposed to Yellow Jack and the other fevers, 'cept for some of our older hands, our Blacks, and such. We'll be arriving right at the height of summer, when it's the sickliest. If we don't have to spend too much time close to shore, we might escape the worst of it, but… perhaps our Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, has some fresh insights about Yellow Jack and malaria?"
"A long passage to get there, sir," Westcott said, shrugging in a fatalistic way. "Do we not run across any foes on the way, at least we will have Captain Blanding's hoped-for skills imparted to them… before we start to lose some of them."
That made Lewrie cock a brow and peer closely. "Rather, let us hope, must we lose some of our people, it comes in battle, and not the fevers first, Mister Westcott," he told him.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
They went roughly Sou'west cross the Bay of Biscay, hundreds of miles out into the mid-Atlantic and offshore from France and the newly established British blockading squadrons, "reaching" most days on the prevailing Westerlies with the winds abeam and sails set "all to the royals" when the weather allowed, making haste. Captain Blanding let them be to bowl along like a Cambridge coach and work on their sail-tending and gunnery practice, his desire to press on over-riding his penchant for squadron manoeuvres, and unwilling to lose a single mile, a single hour, of his pursuit-whether they were chasing a Will-o'-the-Wisp or not.
They encountered only one other ship, off Cape Ferrol, the very northern-most tip of Spain, and that was another British frigate, headed home from the Far East and unaware that the war had resumed until they informed her. Then they plunged on further South, with the winds shifting 'til the latitude of Cape St. Vincent, where the first of the Nor'east Trade Winds began, and they could alter course West and ride them cross the Atlantic to the West Indies, running down a line of latitude for the most part.
It was only then that the four Ship's Surgeons held a meeting aboard Modeste to discuss preventatives against the Yellow Jack and malaria. It was not productive.
"They're certain that we should avoid all shore miasmas, sir," Mr. Main-waring told Lewrie in his cabins after returning back aboard. Mainwaring was a stout fellow in his mid-thirties, so grizzled, though, that he put Lewrie in mind of a professional boxer, with massive hands and thick fingers. "The jungle, forest, marsh, and swamp night mists. We should avoid any anchorage that does not have a sea breeze to keep land winds, and the noisome mists, at bay. And, there is the chichona bark powder, which is efficacious at combatting either of the fevers," he explained, shifting in the collapsing chair and making it creak in an alarming way as he sipped a welcome glass of Lewrie's Rhenish.